Top 10 Inspiring Photography Projects in Creative Boom

Top 10 Inspiring Photography Projects in Creative Boom

2016 has been a year full of uncertainty and mixed emotions. We experienced some of the most shocking moments and experienced some sad losses along the way.

Check out Creative Boom’s fabulous list of the Top 10 Photography Projects of 2016.

10. Abandoned Buildings: Photographer Shows Us a Glimpse of the End of the World

What will happen to the world when we’re no longer here? All that we’ve created and built – schools, hospitals, museums, homes? Will they fall so easily to ruin? Overtaken by nature and quickly turned to dust? What a depressing thought to ponder. For German photographer Christian Richter it has become a bit of an obsession. He loves to travel across Europe in search of forgotten corners, where he can spend a happy hour or two wandering through abandoned spaces and capture everything that’s happened to them… Read more

In her series Girls, Beijing-based photographer Luo Yang reveals a side to contemporary China that is rarely seen in the West. Her portraits depict an emerging generation of women who defy traditional stereotypes. Instead of being simply shy and reserved as one might expect, these Chinese women are also bold, self-aware and painfully cool… Read more

8. Never Before Seen Images of David Bowie from Three Iconic British Photographers

This stunning series of photographs highlights the many sides of the late and great, David Bowie. Captured by three iconic British photographers, the never before seen images were sold to raise funds for Cancer Research UK. The selection of 27 prints, by Chalkie Davies, Tony McGee and Denis O’Regan also went on show at an exhibition, supported by Regent Street, at the very spot where Bowie was photographed for the cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, released in June 1972… Read more

7. All Is Not Lost: Artist Contrasts Female Beauty with Abandoned Buildings (Nsfw)

In his ongoing series, All Is Not Lost, photographer Romany WG captures a different kind of beauty to abandoned buildings with the use of fearless models in his shots, often posing nude to convey passion, strength, softness and sometimes humour. Choosing locations across Europe, he works with women whose “beauty works both in contrast and harmony to backdrops of forgotten industry, dying chateaus, decrepit hospitals and raw nature.”… Read more

6. Dark Brasília: Photographer Captures the Dark Side to Brazil’s Modernist Capital City

Brasília – the capital of Brazil – is renowned the world over for being a planned city distinguished by its white, modernist architecture. Put together by urban planner Lucio Costa in 1956, with many of its futuristic buildings designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, every single element was intended to work in harmony with one another.

With a liberal use of concrete, unexpected curves, geometric angles and huge-scale buildings at every turn, you can imagine it’s a photographer’s dream to visit the city and capture its unusual architecture. That’s exactly what Norway-based photographer Øystein Aspelund recently did, but he certainly raised the bar on shooting this incredible metropolis… Read more

5. Photographer Captures the Wild and Dangerous Streets of New York City in the 1970s

New York City in the 1970s was a wild and dangerous place. After peaking in population in 1950, the city began to feel the effects of large-scale migration to the suburbs, a downturn in industry and commerce as businesses left for cheaper places, an increase in crime and social disorder, and an upturn in its welfare burden – all of which led to a fiscal crisis that pushed the city on the verge of complete collapse.

Photographer Leland Bobbé, a native New Yorker, was there to witness and document the decade, wandering the Big Apple’s streets to capture the local characters… Read more

With everything that’s been happening in Europe lately and the EU struggling to cope with the biggest wave of migrants and refugees its ever known, it’s interesting to discover Polish photographer Josef Schulz’s Übergang series – meaning Crossing – which explores abandoned military checkpoints across the continent… Read more

When Dutch visual artist and photographer Marcel Heijnen moved to Hong Kong, he was immediately drawn to the fascinating culture of shop cats, and decided to capture the little feline emperors amongst their retail kingdoms.

Sharing his shots of the loveable moggies on Instagram under the handle @ChineseWhiskers, the charming series soon grabbed the attention of the world – so much so it’s now available in a book and pop-up exhibition at the Blue Lotus gallery, offering a fascinating insight into Hong Kong’s traditional trades… Read more

2. Photographs of Everyday Life in 1950s New York City Discovered in an Attic 45 Years Later

The vintage photographs you’re about to see have an interesting history. They all came from a cardboard box filled with negatives that was unopened and virtually forgotten for over 45 years. When undiscovered photographer Frank Larson passed away in 1964, his wife Eleanora boxed up all of their possessions and moved out of their retirement home in Lakeville, Connecticut. The box of negatives was one of these items, and it has remained with the family ever since, tucked away in storage… Read more

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Paris was booming. Foreign migration and urbanization of the city caused a huge surge in population and a crisis for housing. France’s solution came in the form of vast housing projects and so during this period massive, modernist and really quite unique estates sprung up across the city — aiming for a new way of living.

Just a few decades later and these towering buildings look dated, discarded and forgotten. Local photographer, Laurent Kronental has become fascinated by the ‘ambitious and dated modernist features’ of these estates… Read more